High Society Smack Down

The hot spring afternoon was compelling the group of well-dressed Charlestonians into the small waiting area of the swanky East Bay Street restaurant forcing a jovial but uncomfortable closeness so everyone could escape the heat outside. The leaders of the group, a good-natured, middle-aged man wearing a tan cotton suit and his wife in a purple cocktail dress hovered over the podium used by the hostess discussing seating arrangements with the young girl busy scribbling notes and talking with the lead waiter next her. Behind the middle-aged man was a slightly younger version of himself dressed in a simple black sports jacket with a green polo shirt and khaki pants that would alternately make a joke at his older brother’s expense or be pushing his very young trophy wife up against the wall to whisper something in her ear. When the trophy wife was not giggling at whatever her husband had privately said she was checking the position of her strapless dress and pulling it back up to a more respectable position. Given how short the one-piece dress was the repositioning was a careful balancing act between showing too much on top or below.

After several minutes the lead waiter, who had walked back into the dining area, returned informing the hostess that the group’s tables were ready. Right after the podium the restaurant’s bar began narrowed the passageway to the main dining area and forced the group to walk two-by-two giving the impression of people walking down a fashion show catwalk. The patrons seated at the bar and sipping cold drinks watched the finely dressed men and elegant ladies pass by wondering what sort of celebration had drawn such a crowd out in the heat.

At the other end of the bar the restaurant opened up into the dining area allowing the group to fan out and take seats at the hastily arranged formation of joined tables in the center of the room that still had various waiters and waitresses adding silverware, napkins, and other table items. The precession of high style had interrupted the normal flow of the wait staff but with them seated the waiters and waitresses quickly returned to their coordinated dance of beehive efficiency centered on the counter situated close to the bar where the food and drinks were picked up to be brought to the tables. Two chefs worked behind the counter making last minute corrections to the items placed on serving trays oblivious to the fire raging in the brick oven behind them.

Most of the idle curiosity the other patrons had about the group were satisfied after they raised their newly arrived glasses of mixed drinks and ice tea in toast to one young lady sitting at the far end of the joined tables congratulating her very recent college graduation. The young lady thanked everyone for their well wishes and the number of pricey gifts and only hoped that a job would soon appear so she could put her expensive degree to some use. After the laughter died down and the young lady returned to her conversation with the people seated close to her the group sank into shared anonymity with the other patrons. That was the case until one last couple appeared escorted by the hostess that once again had drawn the attention of most of the people in the restaurant.

The late arriving man and woman, both in their early twenties, cut an even more eye-catching entrance than the rest of the trendy group. The man was dressed in an US army uniform and was still wearing his black beret inside the restaurant which was arranged on his head in a slightly out of regulation manner making him appear more striking and dangerous. Pinned to the shoulder tabs of his uniform were brand new bronze colored bars signifying a newly minted Second Lieutenant and attached to the lower portion of the lapels of his army green jacket were the crossed rifles showing he was an infantry officer. The high point of his young military career were the highly polished airborne jump wings positioned above his left pocket and overwhelming his two minor ribbon awards attached between the pocket and the coveted silver wings. On initial observation, the young soldier looked calm and confident but anyone taking a longer look could see that his eyes betrayed him showing a hint of the insecurity and nervousness about being around a group of people far more use to the rules and procedures of high society.

The blonde woman walking by his side was dressed in a blue silk dress with a tiered skirt cut short. The modest cut in front showing little in the way of skin was offset by the bold plunge in the back that had every man in the place staring as she passed. Just looking at the stunning woman the first thoughts passing through an observer’s head would be just as wrong as they would have been on her soldier companion. While she presented an air of refinement and breeding looking into her eyes and watching her graceful walk, you would have seen something akin to the beauty of a shark swimming through the water alert for prey. The gorgeous woman scanned her surroundings as confident and powerful as a queen and was not afraid to stare down anyone who looked at her a little too long.

When the young couple arrived at the tables both the middle-aged man and his wife in charge of the fashionable group jumped up and greeted the two enthusiastically. The young blonde-haired woman addressed the middle-aged man as her dad and gave him a big hug then greeted and kissed her mother on the cheek. Once his female companion took her seat the young soldier grabbed and shook the hand of the father, mother, and finally the uncle before sitting beside his girlfriend. After another round of informal banter prompted by the couple’s arrival the table soon quieted down again as waiters and waitresses began serving the meals. The returning quiet was only a brief respite from the main event that would shock everyone in the restaurant.

As the group was nearing the end of dessert, the lieutenant cleared his throat and banged his butter knife against the side of his water glass then carefully standing after moving back his chair. That had the result of silencing not only the conversations at the joined tables but attracting the attention of most everyone seated nearby.

“This seems,” the young officer said addressing the group he was a part of,” to be the best time to do this with Sally’s family all around.” With the smooth movements of someone who had practiced the maneuver countless times he pulled a small box out of his pants pocket, bent down on one knee, and opened it before his shocked girlfriend. “Sally,” he said looking with all earnest at his girlfriend, “we’ve been a part of each other’s lives since our first year in college. I have loved you from the first minute I set eyes on you and have known all along that we would spend the rest of our lives together. Please do me the honor and marry me.”

All around the restaurant the spectacle had brought smiles to most, gasps to several older ladies, and tears to a few for reasons known only to them. The air in the restaurant was electric as the moment hung heavy waiting for what everyone expected would be the happy ending as the beautiful young woman said yes to the handsome soldier. The tension only increased as the young woman cradled the rugged face of the man who had just professed his love in her soft hands and smiled at him as only an angel could.

“Jeff my dearest,” she said sweetly with everyone expecting a positive answer, “there is no way in Hell that I would ever marry you.” Silence had dominated the room with everyone anticipating a different answer but now a heavier stillness reigned as everyone could tell the hammer was about to fall with her explaining why she had crushed the man in front of her who was frozen worse than any marble statue. “Jeff I have known about your insipid social climbing ambitions since we first met, you only saw me as an avenue or tool to family riches and influence. For those reasons alone I would be a fool to marry you but your little fling with my best friend last summer alone ended any chance we had together all by itself.”

Jeff, not one to go down without a fight returned to his chair and looked at the woman who had just embarrassed in front of everyone listening. “If you thought I was only after your family’s money and social standing why did you keep me around for so long?”

“Sweetie,” Sally said looking at him like an owner might talk to a pet dog, “You were nothing but meat to me. Good in bed and fun to be around but nothing more.”

Anger began to well up in the spurned man with his face turning red and his hands shaking. The silence in the restaurant had gone on for so long that everyone knew something bad would have to happen to break it. At Jeff and Sally’s tables, most of the group was trying hard to look some other place while Sally’s dad stared at the boyfriend worried what he might do next, only the uncle was smiling enjoying the unfolding drama.

As Jeff’s hands continued to shake with his mind someplace far away and bloody Sally gently touched his shoulder. “Jeff give up the dramatics,” she said. “You are making a scene and if you do anything stupid your life will never recover. You and I can walk out of here soon and you can go your own way and be the injured party with any number of like-mined social sluts eager to take my place.”

Like a deadly storm that had changed course to disappear over the horizon Jeff’s face cleared and his hands stopped shaking. After everyone was finished and the check was paid, the group left almost as regally as they arrived. The young officer departed first and alone with his head held high. Sally left with her sister and a few friends laughing about the whole affair and openly talking about a young lawyer she had met the week before. For the rest of the people in the restaurant still stunned at what had happened, a slow realization crept in their minds that you could not pay for such high quality dramatic entertainment.

Author's note: Spent Saturday doing some sightseeing around Charleston and while having lunch with Dragonwife and Miss Wiggles at an excellent restaurant this event took place. Now understand I added a great deal of "color" to the story but the basic premise of a dude associated with the military going down in inglorious flames after asking his obviously high society girlfriend to marry him in front of everyone was real. I changed many things just to avoid any possible legal issues like names and descriptions of people in the story but anyone with a little knowledge of Charleston restaurants should be able to guess the place we were eating. The food was fantastic and I will return whenever I am lucky enough to get back down to the Holy city.

The Best Show in Florida

For years Sunday nights were special for my siblings and me because The Wonderful World of Disney television show with its fascinating and funny stories from the life of animals out in the wilderness to cartoons showing the misadventures of Mickey, Donald, and Goofy. Up until the early 1970’s the show was my family’s only connection to the world and characters Walt created.

Some nights the show would highlight the Disneyland theme park out in California enchanting my younger cousins, siblings, and myself with images of the fantastic rides and amazing sights for anyone lucky enough to live near it or able to afford the trip to such a fantastic place. As much as my kinfolk and myself may have desired to see the home of Mickey and Donald at that moment in time such a long journey out west might as well as been on the other side of the planet for us given money and time demands that our parents faced.

The opening of Disney World outside Orlando, Florida in 1971 changed all that. I do not believe news filtered down to children then as fast as it seems to do now but when the announcement of Disney World’s construction reached us I do vaguely remember something akin to a small riot erupting with only my grandmother threatening to make us pray all afternoon bringing back some order. Other small kiddy riots and celebrations occurred in the neighborhood and school among our friends with the spreading realization that Disney World’s location would allow us a chance to experience what we all saw on television. After that, it just became a waiting game for everyone to see when the parents would finally breakdown and take us.

The summer of 1972 was the magic moment for my siblings and me with our mom and dad loading up the Chevrolet and beginning the drive south to the Sunshine state. Now as much as the marriage between our mom and dad was an utter disaster on par with major earthquakes and killer tsunamis I have to give them credit for even attempting such a trip. Having them sitting so close together confined in a hot car for hours with four small children in the back was just asking for trouble.

Being the oldest kid, I remember some of the drive but unlike today travelling along I-95 with its countless opportunities for bathroom breaks and convenient place to eat, I recall very long stretches of nothing but billboards and trees lining the roadside. Only when we crossed over into Florida do I remember seeing the ramshackle souvenir and fruit stands that sold dead baby alligators dipped in lacquer frozen in menacing positions and countless bags of Florida oranges stacked far higher than I was tall at that age. Arriving in Orlando back then was a very different world as compared to the huge city that exists today. There was an absence of other flashy tourist traps and while I could be wrong, to me the town retained a hint of the rural atmosphere that existed before Walt discovered the place.

Driving into the parking lot of the motel my dad picked for our stay in the Orlando area was a huge disappointment. The first thing I noticed was the lack of a pool that every motel in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina just thirty miles up north from my hometown had in abundance. The place looked rundown and a little scary for some reason but that may have been because it somehow reminded me of the Bates motel which I knew about from seeing the movie Psycho at the hometown drive-in with my uncle and his date.

My parents, who never missed a chance to argue, really went at it in that parking lot with my mom wanting us to find another place so we could have a pool. My dad’s position was that the trip was already way to expensive and that the whole purpose was for us kids to see Disney, not swim in a pool which we could do a lot cheaper back home. What decided the matter was the radio, which almost at that moment began reporting a hurricane moving toward the Atlantic coast of Florida. Some serious dark and intimidating clouds even then were floating by with the wind picking up speed seemingly by the minute.

It was not long before that motel was providing refuge from howling winds and blowing rain but neither my siblings nor I were worried about that. We had heard our parents discussing the possibility the hurricane could derail the entire trip, forcing us back home without actually making it inside Disney World. For me the stage was set for a long night’s vigil to wait out the storm willingly saying prayers to the point my grandmother would have been proud.

Cooped up in the room for so long I clearly remember the fake wood paneling on the walls that for some reason was popular back then. The two creaky queen sized beds with frayed blue blankets that had my mother and baby sister in one and my dad and youngest brother, Peter, in the other. Middle brother Bobby and I were sharing a lumping rollaway bed that the old lady who ran the motel, along with her husband, brought us after we checked in. In the corner of the room was a huge wood paneled console television with a fuzzy color picture that not only had the standard three national networks broadcast through local affiliates but some sort of strange, to me, independent station that aired movies and ancient shows that my parents remembered from their teenage years.

As the night progressed old movies and archaic reruns came and went on that independent station broken only by and occasional tired and worried weather guy in a rumpled suit giving an update on the storm.

Sometime that morning the wind and rain that at times shook the entire motel stopped so suddenly that its absence was actually scary in itself. It had been a good while since the rumpled weatherman had interrupted whatever show was on to update where the hurricane was heading leaving the big question of whether we would reach Disney World still in some doubt. With the wind and rain apparently over, I opened the room door to peer outside seeing only the parking lot with minor debris lying around and the motel owners gathering it up. Feeling the need to satisfy my concerns over how the hurricane might have ruined our trip, I decided to ask the old man and his wife what, if anything, they knew.

The old couple had taken seats underneath the awning directly over the entrance to the motel office and for the most part just seemed to be enjoying the return of calm weather and the lingering breeze. Both saw me approaching them but neither seemed overly concerned about a young boy they did not know leaving his parents behind in a motel room early in the morning after a hurricane. I actually remember taking this as a good omen figuring if they were going to hassle me they would have said something earlier.

“What can I do for you this fine morning young man?” The old man said looking at me with a friendly twinkle in his eye. The old lady looked towards me and just smiled then turned away returned to her thought.

The man’s accent was the first thing I noticed the second was how genuinely friendly he seemed. Grownups forget that many kids have a natural ability to know when their presence is only tolerated and my instinct was telling me this man truly being sociable.

“Sir, I was wondering is the hurricane coming back, my parents have said that if the storm stays we will have to go back home without seeing Disney World.” I said hoping the answer I would get would be the good one.

The old man laughed and slapped his knee just like I had seen in several Western movies. “Don’t worry little one, the storm is moving up the coast and will be memory before long.”

That of course was just the answer I wanted leaving a big smile on my face. I began to turn away and head back to my room but the old man stopped me.

“Please, sit down and talk with me for awhile. We can enjoy the nice breeze, which will be gone soon, and we all will be sweating like pigs again. What type of soda do you like?” He asked and after telling him grape the old man yelled out to his wife to get me a bottle of what I wanted.

With a bottle of grape soda in my hands we began a conversation that had him asking as many question about me as I asked of him. He asked me about my school, my favorite subjects, what foods I liked, what I thought of my younger siblings, what I wanted to see at Disney World, and many other things. From the questions I asked him I learned he was German, that he and his wife had come to this country a few years after World War Two. Since my knowledge of the war at that age came primarily from “Hogan’s Heroes” reruns I think he forgave me for asking him if he fought for the bad guys, which I believe he did. I have no idea for certain if he did fight for the wrong side and if he did what he may have done, seen, or knew about during those bloody years, all I do know he was a kind man to me and was clearly enjoying my visit.

Our conversation eventually drifted to the Apollo program and it was then I learn he had seen most of the rocket launches at Cape Canaveral since they began using that site. He had even seen the Apollo 11 launch that had taken the astronauts to the surface of the moon. We talked about what we would like to see next happen in space and my hopes of what would be common up there when I grew up.

Just when things were starting to wind down there was a rather large splash across the road from his motel and it was then that I noticed the full moon reflecting off the water of large pond.

“Young man, you came all this way to see strange creatures and a fake castle, you need to see the best part of Florida before it is paved over and forgotten.” The old man rushed inside the office and grabbed a huge flashlight but before coming back out turned off all the outside lights. With only the glow from the moon we both walked across the road that the entire time we talked was completely devoid of any passing cars. As I was taught, I looked both ways before crossing and noticed how isolated his motel was, the only lights I could see were to a small gas station a few miles down the road.

“I know it is hard for active young boys like you but be silent and watch the water and the sides of the pond.” He said to me as we stood on the far side of the road.

The first thing I noticed was the gently swaying trees on the edge of the water. Their long dangling limbs seemed to be dancing in the breeze painting ripples on the water where they touched the pond. In the water gentle swirls showed where bass played and occasionally jumped looking to catch a flying insect themselves returning after the passing of the storm. After turning on the old man’s huge flashlight sinister pairs of eyes were spotted in the water cruising along like submarines stalking unknowing merchant ships. And like castaway survivors on small deserted islands bands of turtles clung to limbs of fallen trees sticking out of the water.

Using the beam of light to probe the shore of the pond brought the snorting sounds of wild pigs roaming around. At one point the light reflected off the eyes of some species of wildcat lounging on the limb of a tree, an angry snarl resulted in me disturbing it and it jumped from the tree and disappear back into the darkness. It was only when several pairs of those sinister eyes cruising the waters began coming our way did the old man pull me back across the road and turn his business lights back on.

“Well young man, remember this night for me and what I showed you when you are all grown up and have children of your own.” He said shaking my hand as if I was a real adult and with that he sent me back to my room where I found everyone still sleeping.

We did indeed make it to Disney World and even with my parents complaining my siblings and I had a great time. Many years have passed since that old gentleman showed me the true wonder of Florida and each time I find myself in that area I think of him and that pond. I have no idea where his motel was located and figure since it was only twenty minutes from the entrance to Disney World some giant resort or outlet mall now occupies that location. Such is the price of what we call progress but the show on that pond with a full moon hanging in the sky will stay with me until the day I die.

Looking At My Golden Years

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While in no way do I consider myself “old” physically, emotionally, or mentally a bit of a mild shock hit me the other day concerning what until recently was strictly the abstract concept of old age retirement. Now understand I retired from the National Guard in 2005 after twenty-one years of combined service in both the active army and National Guard but the great fiscal guardians of taxpayer funds, both elected and bureaucratic, proclaimed long ago that such veterans (read: fools) like me cannot receive compensation for our services until the age of sixty. Even with National Guard retirement kicking in, I am looking at the year 2033 before I can even begin thinking about hanging up the “Gone Fishing” sign. Since two pillars of my retirement plan rely on government-managed money, the other being Social Security, that 2033 date is something I have only penciled in, so the real date could be something closer to next to never unless I happen to hit the lotto. This leaves me largely dependent on whatever private retirement nest egg I can build up and put it in the hands of monetary experts for investment like those trusted gentlemen from Goldman Sachs who testified before Congress yesterday claiming that their raping of the country was really cool and above board. This is why once a week I will fall to my knees before the lottery kiosk in the convenience store and before picking out my five numbers pray to Mighty God in Heaven for both a smallpox outbreak on Wall Street and for that week’s winning numbers.

Now I bear a huge chunk of responsibility for not being prepared as I should for old age. In my “younger” years working in the manufacturing segment of the economy I jumped from one electronic technician job to the other trying to stay ahead of that thing called global free-trade economics by the high paid but soulless syncopates on the business news networks. Despite my best efforts to build a 401k over those years I still had to ride out two economic-driven layoffs and a plant closing that had me part of the skeleton crew boxing factory equipment for the slow boat ride to China. Other things generally falling in the category called life happened as well like a couple of kids showing up, the purchase of transportation so I could get to work, repairs to the house, medical bills, and even vacations to get over the stress of living the glorious American Dream. This brings me to the recent event that shattered my complacency concerning my private retirement fund.

One of the neat things about working at a hospital as opposed to working the manufacturing field is that people will always be getting sick or injured and needing treatment as long as their health insurance isn’t suddenly canceled. However in manufacturing there are a finite number of widgets people can buy which results in layoffs or factories being sent overseas so the suits can squeeze out every cent in profit using slave labor.

Given this relative dependability at the hospital my 401k was merged with the other pitiful survivors from my previous jobs and for a while was doing okay. However, the economic meltdown and resulting stock market collapse played Hell with my retirement funds. As the financial world fell apart I was left with the thought that I would have liked to have been kissed first before serving as some bitch for a Wall Street metrosexual suffering from delusions of godhood.

However, not having friends in high places I lived without my bailout and soldiered on watching my beleaguered funds very slowly recover as the same shits who got us in this mess reward each other with colossal bonuses.

My employer transferred management of our personal retirement funds to a different company requiring everyone at a minimum to contact the new company so new investment strategies could be worked out. So the other day like a good subordinate with no other option being caught in the wheels of global banking I introduced myself to the nice lady who would guide me to my retirement dreams.

As I took a seat we exchanged the required small talk and got down to the business of figuring out how I would live out my golden years. It took several minutes for her to review both some stuff on her laptop screen I could not see and some papers I had brought with me.

“Well sir,” she said punching keys on the laptop with some sort of program on the screen reflecting off her glasses, “let’s see how we can get you to your retirement goals. I see we have your age, your other sources of retirement income, and how much you have it your 401k right now.” Some sort of unhappy number appeared on the screen because her professional honed mask of perky optimism collapsed like a house of cards for several seconds.

“Is there anything wrong?” I asked but I figured since she only makes money if I keep an account she would never tell me.

God bless her training because the perky mask of eternal optimism reasserted itself and she looked up at me with a smile that while friendly would have scared babies given how fake it was. “No sir, we are a team and I will see that you get as close to your goals as possible.”

Despite the opinion of many and I admit some actual evidence I am not a complete fool, I figured the news was bad and after reviewing the retirement printout I made my trip back to the convenience store to pray again for smallpox and winning lotto numbers.

How is talking from one's butt news?

Some caterpillars essentially talk with their rear ends, scraping oar-like structures on leaf surfaces to signal turf ownership to intruders. Now researchers have found the butt-talking evolved from crawling behaviors.

Now if only some National Science Foundation research grants could be created to explore the bizarre nature of politicians and their communication habits since they have been talking from their asses since the beginnings of human civilization. I purpose that all elected officials be captured and tagged allowing an in-depth study on the nature of anal communications. I am sure that since this activity originated from crawling behavior that plenty of their more evolved predecessors can be found simply by looking under any slime covered rocks for comparative studies.

Business Theater of the Absurd

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Since I am already working with a severe mental deficit at the best of times, the cumulative effects of working third shift makes watching the morning news shows with the hosts explaining the theater of the absurd that passes as normal human affairs an added threat to the weak underpinning of my sanity. Nevertheless, the last hour of my shift will have me in front of some television in the company of my bagel and cream cheese trying to make sense of the verbal offal put forth by the talking heads. For me the morning news shows on the business networks are the worst with high paid heralds of free-market global capitalism almost daily making some outrageous remark that is either condescending to us working folks or showing blatant ignorance about matters outside their area of knowledge.

As a kid growing up in the South I got use to traveling preachers working the revival circuit during humid summer evenings standing in front of us sweating sinners with a fanatical gleam in his eye declaring someone a “Good Christian” and praising God that such people walk the earth. Such declarations by strange men faded into background static during my teenage years as summer revivals became less a chance to get on the right side of Jesus and more an opportunity to get on top of Savannah out behind the bushes. However, I must admit to be taken back a few months ago when I saw the same fanatical gleam in the eyes of one of the business journalist babes on a discussion panel declaring someone a “Good Capitalist.” I have known for a long time that the high and mighty business and investor class have long since sold their souls to the god of Profit but I was surprised to see such a similar religious zeal on someone whose job it is to inform and investigate instead take on the mantle of an acolyte, or better yet syncopate.

I would be terribly remiss if I did not bring up the words of the brunette hottie who is nearly drop dead gorgeous in her own right without having to resort to the silicone implants and countless bottles of peroxide like her Fox Business Channel cohorts. This fine example of a business journalist once declared that China was doing us a favor by selling us toys with lead paint and food with poisons. That earned her my lifetime award for heartless corporate shrill babe. I just hope when she gets around to having a few hatchlings of her own so she can really show her appreciation to China by giving them such toys and food.

The latest winner for me though was yesterday morning when one of brunette hottie’s cohorts was whining about all the money the airlines were losing in Europe being ground by the volcanic ash hanging over the continent. The dude openly wondered why they had not sent planes up in the air to see if there was any way over, under or around the ash produced by the volcano in Iceland. Now understand I have nothing against capitalism except when all common sense is abandoned. This guy’s worry was not over the thousands of people stranded in airports struggling to find other means to get home but over the hundreds of millions and possibly billions these airlines will lose with their planes staying on the ground.

Now dude should have been able to guess that all sorts of meteorologists and aviation experts were constantly pouring over satellite data concerning the ash and when it might clear out. A report I heard from a completely different source hours later did say a few planes were being sent up to check whether flights could start again; so dude had no need to get his knickers in bind because the experts knew what they were doing. I have to admit though to thinking the fun thing to do would be to throw whiner dude forcibly onto one of those planes checking out the ash levels in the atmosphere and then see how much he worried about the airlines losing money.

I'm sorry, I've just seen too many sons of bitches lately and this song came to mind:

America Still Lost in Space

Not too many weeks ago, I made a promise to myself to stay away from American politics for good. The slime infesting the halls of government and narrow-minded sycophants seeking only their interests at the expense of everything else had turned my stomach to the point that I finally realized the rot had gone to the core making any attempt at reform the same as shuffling the deck chairs on the Titanic. However, I find myself once again forced to comment on the swirling cesspool, this time for my own narrow interests.
I voted for President Obama largely on the idea that he could lead the country into the 21^st century in spite of stagnate views and festering apathy from far too many people who are fanatically holding onto an America that really last existed fifty some-odd years ago. Now to be fair, the suitcases of his family were not even unpacked in the White House when a storm of entrenched forces opened fire on him and have yet to let up. However, instead of the president rallying his forces and heading into the fire at least from my view he sat back and became more a sedate university professor observing the mud throwing and sausage making from a distance. Only recently after his health care reform looked to be roasting on an open fire with Republicans gleefully dancing among the flames like children from Lord of the Flies did he finally jump into the mix.
Along those same lines, I at least think the man is falling short again of the reasons I voted for him. Tomorrow Lord Brainiac will travel down to Florida to once again like all the presidents since Reagan and rededicate the country to some national goal in space. This is after canceling the Constellation program with billions already spent and some actual metal being cut. In its place, the president will propose that commercial companies will act as taxi drivers for American astronauts taking them to and from the International Space Station. Companies whose "space taxis" are at best full size display models but more than likely nice slides on a Power Point presentation.
However long it takes these vehicles to be built we will spend years paying the Russians 50 million dollars a seat to do it for us on their simple but very reliable Soyuz spacecraft. It is supposed by those people running things now that going with commercial spacecraft will be easier, cheaper, and push the boundaries of possible human space exploration finally out of low Earth orbit. While that may be the case a letter signed by the many former American astronauts, in my mind more reliable experts, differ:

NASA is budgeting billions of dollars to support the development of U.S. commercial spaceships that could help fill the gap. The beneficiaries of those billions would include smaller aerospace ventures, such as California-based SpaceX and Virginia-based Orbital Sciences. In their letter, the astronauts say that the availability of such craft "cannot be predicted with any certainty, but is likely to take substantially longer and be more expensive than we would hope."

The real experts go on to write:

Armstrong and his colleagues complained that the cancellation would amount to wasting the roughly $10 billion that has been allocated to Constellation over the past five years. "Equally importantly, we will have lost the many years required to re-create the equivalent of what we will have discarded," they wrote.

It would be wrong for me to ignore the problems with the Constellation program; it was over budget, behind schedule, and lost in a NASA bureaucracy that can make cold molasses look like running water. My point in all this is that after several administrations all making goals but never reaching them it is a sad state for a country that decided to land a man safely on the moon when it was still finding it difficult to launch a damn satellite into orbit.
Hell, I'm all for going to the real space explorations experts, the Russian, and ask them to teach us how to do it. More than likely it will be faster and cheaper in the long run. If the scattered brained American collective has post Cold War issues with the Russkies we can just wait for the Chinese and buy tickets on their flights. They have stated in no uncertain terms that they will land a man on the moon sometime in the 2020s. Even the Indians have it as a goal to reach the moon appearing far more determined and brave than we are right now. Then again they are not fighting two wars essentially over oil, have a decent education system, and a population a little more interested in something other than reality television and Tiger Woods screwing around.
Yes, Lord Brainiac will come out smiling tomorrow and give and impassioned speech saying that America will keep leading the world in manned space exploration by making our goal going to Mars. So excuse my cynicism if I say all he should do is replay the speeches by his last four predecessor on the subject because they are all empty words. I'll skip the speech and read up on former great powers that choked on keeping up with the future and thinking about more than immediate concerns and got left behind by those that could.